Subject to: Phebe Vayanos

Phebe Vayanos is Professor of Industrial & Systems Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Southern California, and an Associate Director of the Center for Artificial Intelligence in Society. Prior to joining USC, she was a lecturer in the Operations Research and Statistics Group at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and a postdoctoral research associate in the Operations Research Center at MIT. She holds a PhD degree in Operations Research and an MEng degree in Electrical & Electronic Engineering, both from Imperial College London. Through her research, she aims to advance integer, stochastic, and robust optimization, and their interface with machine learning, causal inference, and economics to enable the design of predictive and prescriptive models that are robust, interpretable, and fair, being suitable to deploy in high-stakes settings. In particular, she aims to directly apply the methods and tools she creates in her work to make a positive impact on society, especially supporting undeserved and marginalized communities. She is the recipient of the NSF CAREER award and the USC Viterbi Junior Research Award and, jointly with her students, she earned the INFORMS Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Ambassador Program Award. Since 2019, Phebe is serving as a member of the ad hoc INFORMS AI Strategy Advisory Committee. She is an elected member of the Committee on Stochastic Programming, which is the governing body of the Stochastic Programming Society. Phebe is also the VP of Communications for the Section on Public Sector OR at INFORMS. In addition, she is an Associate Editor for Computational Management Science and for Operations Research Letters.